[FoRK] How far will the dollar fall? (was: Demonizing the hedge funds...)

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Kevin Elliott <k-elliott at wiu.edu> wrote:
>
>  On Apr 20, 2008, at 8:50 PM, Aaron Burt wrote:
>
>
> > On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 02:39:00PM -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
> >
> > > ...the rising cost of oil (in large part, though not exclusively, a
> > > result of the war in Iraq and resulting destabilization)...
> > >
> >
> > I'd say that the Iraq invasion had a small role in rising oil prices.
> > Production has been at roughly pre-war levels for the past while.
> > That Saudi Arabia didn't (and likely can't) increase production to meet
> > rising demand has a much larger role.
> >
>
>  Worth noting is that part of the problem/struggle/challenge in all this is
> that because of rising demand, and the fact that getting new oil supplies
> requires vast amounts of time and monetary capital, the price of oil doesn't
> tell us anything about it's scarcity.  Any commodity that has to sort of
> investment pattern will show large shifts in price whenever demand
> increases...
>
>  Of course, the great irony in all this is that from a global warming
> perspective, expensive oil is _PRECISELY_ what the world needs.

Or it would be, if the primary alternative weren't
even-more-problematic coal tars.

Luis